


Fray

by Kuroeia (Empatheia)



Category: Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magika | Puella Magi Madoka Magica
Genre: F/F, Femslash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-29
Updated: 2015-07-29
Packaged: 2018-04-11 21:49:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4453667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Empatheia/pseuds/Kuroeia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Keep going because there's nothing else to be done.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fray

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [Girls Like Girls](http://inthewildwood.livejournal.com/40383.html#t188095) comment ficathon on LJ ([thread](http://inthewildwood.livejournal.com/40383.html?thread=145087#t145087)).
> 
> Prompt: _when I ran out of thread, I couldn't let go// but that's not sewing, that's, that's just poking holes_

She’s breaking the world, she knows.

Every time she forces time to halt and trundle backwards on its clumsy wheels, along a track that was never meant to be retread, she can feel things tearing around the edges. 

Every time she gathers up a new fold up to stitch over the old layers, dozens deep, she can feel the fraying.

It isn't even helping. That’s not the worst of it, but it’s something, and she thinks about it sometimes. She's breaking the world for nothing, but Madoka is the world to her and so she can't stop. The problem is that if she accepts -- even for an instant -- that perhaps Madoka can't be saved, that it's fate, that the world wants or needs things to be this way, it becomes very difficult to see anything about the world worth her guilt.

Homura has her answer. The world will let Madoka live or the world will deserve its death.

Another failed attempt, today, this month. At least Madoka doesn't ask for her death at Homura's hand this time. Walpurgisnacht is enough. A soul is a hardy thing, but there's only so much even the hardiest it can take, and there's already a wound in Homura's from the first time that won't ever heal. She hears the gunshot in her dreams. It echoes like an earthquake. No human being can kill what they love most and survive intact.

Homura might have wished to be less human, and suffered less. But she didn’t.

Time lurches forward, mindlessly yearning for fresh tracks, uninterrupted momentum. Screeches as she drags it back.

 _No,_ she says, and because the Incubators broke the universe, it listens. So much power, and yet she is helpless to accomplish the only thing that matters.

_No._

She wakes up to a familiar ceiling, familiar sunlight, familiar grief. It won’t be different this time either, but she will try.

For Madoka, again, she will try.

**END**


End file.
